Feature

It’s common, if you reside in management layers, to lose your connection with the player in the street. Likewise, if you come into games from other industries, it’s typical to feel disconnected from the customer. It’s hard to know whether a Gears of War or a Halo are a good idea if you don’t have that physical connection to games.

What management often reaches for in this scenario is features. The users are there, goes the reasoning. So they can be attracted to a better product with superior features. Games are just products, so the rules of product sales apply.

Feature-led thinking is the sort of logic that led loads of companies up the garden path into creating would-be World of Warcrafts. It's why big publishers decline suddenly and why Sony has dipped from first to third place in the console war. The problem is that the conventional wisdom that guides these decisions often confuses an entertainment customer for a features customer.